The Meth Supremacy

IN 2018, DIRECTORATE S [OF PAKISTAN’S INTER-SERVICES INTELLIGENCE] EXPERIENCED a successful year overall. The Trump administration was frustrated after the failure of Operation Iron Tempest, which had raised the possibility of direct talks with the Taliban. Haji Juma Khan was released from US custody and the alliance with the Sinaloa Cartel began to show promising financial returns. Directorate S’s preferred Pashtun ally, Zalmay Khalilzad, was back in the game. With the rise of e-commerce, crystal meth shipments to the continental US gained momentum, and third country routings obscured their origin.

A distressed Trump sent the acting assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, Alice Wells, who spoke both Arabic and Urdu, to engage with the Taliban leaders in Qatar, who were under Directorate S’s influence. The Kabul government was intentionally excluded from the talks, as Directorate S aimed for total control over the expanding narcotics trade in Afghanistan and was reluctant to share any profits with Kabul. At that time, General Qamar Bajwa, Pakistan’s tenth army chief, was rapidly amassing wealth, becoming a dollar billionaire.

Khalilzad was officially recalled to public service in the US to lead negotiations with the Taliban and arrived in Doha. It was now safe for the then-ISI chief, Lt General Asim Munir, to end the pretence of Mullah Baradar’s ‘incarceration’. The meth business required Baradar’s management skills, which were essential on the ground. Consequently, Baradar joined the Khalilzad-Taliban talks as head of the Taliban delegation sometime in February 2019.

In response to these developments, Munir ordered Quetta Shura chief Hibatullah Akhundzada to reconcile with Sirajuddin Haqqani and unite around a dual strategy of simultaneous talks and combat against the US and their Kabul allies. While Hibatullah had his own reasons for hesitating on talks, Haqqani was determined not to let negotiations impede his ability to fight effectively.

Directorate S had equipped and trained the Taliban’s Sare Qeta formations to increase casualties among Afghan security forces, aiming to both demoralize them and push them to the brink of collapse. At the same time, Directorate S’s strategy was for the Taliban to intensify operations in and around cities. This approach was designed to draw security forces away from rural areas and concentrate them in urban centres. By doing so, the Taliban could capture highways, isolate the cities, and generate fear among the populace. The only significant obstacle to the success of this strategy was the USAF.

The USAF was once again ordered to target the Afghan narcotics industry. On 6 May 2019, they used smart munitions to bomb sixty-eight meth labs in southwestern Afghanistan. All sixty-eight labs were destroyed in a single day, in the Bakwa district of Farah province. Since autumn 2018, the DEA had observed traders from Farah and Helmand at the foothills of the mountains, eager to buy the crop at the ‘mountain gate’. The increasing market demand caused ephedra prices to triple between 2017 and 2018, attracting more villagers during the harvest period. Students and shepherds, who previously grazed their goats on the same hillsides, also joined the harvest. In parts of Ghazni province, harvesting ephedra during the three-month harvest period had become a daily job more lucrative than any other. A single villager could harvest up to 70kg of ephedra a day. With the help of a donkey, they could earn up to $125 per day for their efforts.
The DEA relied on the David Mansfield report on ephe­dra cultivation in Afghanistan. Although the full extent of ephedra’s geographic spread was unknown, reports indicated it grew wild in the mountains of Wardak, Ghor, Helmand, Uru­zgan and Ghazni provinces. Assessing the scale of production was even more challenging. Estimates suggested that the har­vested crop from a representative sample of a valley, including around fifteen villages in Ghazni, could total up to 2,500 metric tonnes in a single season. This amount of ephedra could pro­duce between 8 and 25 metric tonnes of methamphetamine.

With 192,000 square kilometres of mountainous land over 2,500 metres in altitude in Afghanistan where ephedra could grow, there was no shortage of raw material. The DEA believed that under these circumstances, it was only a matter of time before Afghanistan’s methamphetamine industry rivalled its heroin trade. Consequently, the USAF raid was another reaction by the White House to address the DEA’s concerns.

Interestingly, the entire ephedra trade continued unabated.

There was no effort to interdict the supply lines delivering this raw material to the meth labs. As a result, methamphetamine seizures remained relatively minimal at first. From a paltry few kilos seized in 2010—when the first meth produced under Guzman’s [Joaquín Guzmán aka ‘EL Chapo’] direction began to appear—annual meth seizures in Afghanistan reached 180kg in 2018. In the first half of 2019, seizures surged to a record 650kg, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The epicentre of the ephedra aka Oman trade was the Abdul Wadood Bazaar in Bakwa, Farah province. Traders there could still buy and sell ephedra, as well as glass flasks, solvents, acid, and iodine. Although much of this equipment was not used in the heroin trade, it suggests a strong and growing local market for ephedra.

In 2018, one Hawar (450g) of harvested ephedra sold for $284 in Bakwa. This amount could produce 12kg of ephedrine, according to meth cooks in Bakwa who spoke with the Integrated Drug Production Unit (IDPU) team. That ephedrine could be converted into 8kg of nearly 95 per cent pure crystal meth using commonly available chemicals like toluene and iodine.

Each kilogram of this meth sold for $316, making the total value of the 8kg approximately $2,500. In 2019, the street price of meth in the US was $40,000 per kg, meaning the entire 8kg batch was worth $320,000. A quick calculation shows that a metric tonne of meth in the US in 2019 sold for $40 million, compared to $320,000 acquisition cost per metric tonne in the Bakwa market. This stark contrast illustrates the immense profitability in the meth business.

However, following the USAF strikes, the trade went underground, with locals shifting to trading from inside their homes. Thus, for the ISI, the Sinaloa, and the CJNG cartels, protecting the ephedra-to-meth trade was essential, necessitating the use of every asset down the value chain, from Khalilzad onwards. Although the USAF airstrikes did not cause significant damage, they nonetheless alarmed Director­ate S, which grew concerned about potential next steps from the White House. Trump’s unpredictability heightened their anxiety. As a result, Directorate S decided to adopt a low profile and had the Taliban hold off on actions until early September 2019. At that point, they were directed to launch coordinated attacks on the cities of Farah, Pul-i-Khumri and Kunduz. These attacks began after the Khalilzad-Baradar talks hit a roadblock.

The Khalilzad–Baradar talks, which had been ongoing for almost a year at the luxurious Sheraton Grand Doha Resort, carefully avoided addressing the elephant in the room—the ISI. While the ISI meticulously moderated the ‘staged’ talks without directly participating, they simultaneously escalated violence in Afghanistan. In reality, these talks were essentially ‘shadow’ US–ISI negotiations.

These talks hit a major roadblock in September 2019 and unravelled spectacularly. On 7 September 2019, President Trump made the startling announcement that he had invited Taliban leaders to Camp David for talks, only to cancel the meeting shortly thereafter. Trump may have cancelled the Camp David summit because he realized that the US was mak­ing most of the concessions while the Taliban made few, if any.

The sequence of events—from revealing a hasty plan to hold high-risk talks at Camp David to suspending them—resembled a chaotic roller coaster marked by serious dysfunction and incompetence. Trump’s approach was a classic case of creat­ing a problem where none existed and exacerbating it in the process. By suspending negotiations that were already flawed due to their indirect nature with the ISI’s proxies, Trump effectively demanded the Taliban stop their attacks—a demand they were unlikely to meet. This move not only exposed the trilateral talks but also revealed a misguided mediation effort. This was not a task suited for the US president and represented a significant blunder.

THE FACT THAT the Khalilzad-Baradar talks had been ongoing for a year before their suspen­sion signalled to the ISI that a transition or coalition government dominated by the Taliban could serve three main purposes. First, it would ensure a cessa­tion of attacks on the narcotics industry, which was crucial for maintaining the uninterrupted flow of revenue to the ISI’s coffers. Second, it would provide the ISI with an opportunity to freeze the conflict, thereby protecting its forces from further casualties and reducing the costs of weapons and munitions. Third, it would prevent the independent-minded Taliban military commanders from gaining too much power. Directorate S understood that a purely military solution would strengthen these commanders at the expense of their influence in Islamabad.

By the winter of 2019, Directorate S aimed to limit military escalation to avoid disrupting Khalilzad’s mission in Doha. The Pakistan Army viewed the Khalilzad process as a golden opportunity. Trump was eager to exit Afghanistan before the November 2020 US presidential elections, and such a favourable deal might not be available in 2021.

As part of the peace process brokered by Munir between Hibatullah Akhundzada and Sirajuddin Haqqani, an important development was the delayed release of Anas Haqqani, Sirajuddin’s younger brother, from US imprisonment. This delay was due to the breakdown of the Khalilzad–Baradar talks. Sirajuddin Haqqani was becoming increasingly impatient. Directorate S pressured Khalilzad through back channels to find a way to restart the talks so that Anas could be released.

Directorate S’s anxiety eased after Khalilzad visited Islamabad in October 2019. Although the trip was of­ficially to meet with Taliban representatives, Khalilzad’s actual purpose was to confer with General Bajwa and Munir’s successor, Lt General Faiz Hameed, under the pre­text of discussing the possible release of two hostages held by the Taliban: Timothy Weeks, an Australian, and Kevin King, an American. Both were professors at the American University of Ka­bul. Following this meeting, Anas Haqqani was released on 18 November 2019, and the two professors were freed on 19 November in a prisoner swap. Soon after, talks resumed, and on 29 February 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic began to spread worldwide, the US and the Taliban signed a complex agreement to end the nearly two decade-long war.

The deal brokered by Khalilzad was so heavily skewed in favour of the Taliban that it was surprising how a US official, empowered by his government, could so completely compromise his govern­ment’s interests, and seemingly get away with it. Either Trump was unaware or simply did not care. The release of 5,000 hard­core Taliban prisoners while the jihad was still ongoing greatly pleased the ISI. In fact, there was a joke in Doha that Khalilzad earned the nickname ‘chief Taliban enforcer’ because of the way he pressured [Ashraf] Ghani to accept the Taliban’s demands.

Days after the signing of the Khalilzad-Mullah Baradar deal on 29 February 2020, Sirajuddin Haqqani, now emboldened by the release of his brother Anas, launched attacks that psycho­logically undermined the Kabul government. On 3 March 2020, the Quetta Shura resumed offensive operations against the Afghan army and police, targeting Kunduz and Helmand provinces. In response, on 4 March, the USAF conducted retaliatory airstrikes on Taliban fighters in Helmand.

Despite these airstrikes, following the agreement, the US ceased supporting the Kabul government’s offensive operations, forcing it to adopt mostly defensive positions across the country. According to the Doha agreement, the USAF was restricted from attacking Taliban groups unless they were more than 500 metres away, giving the Taliban an immediate advantage in targeting government forces. As a result, the morale of the Kabul army and police declined, making them more inclined to negotiate with the Taliban. Additionally, due to the lack of informa­tion on the secret annexes of the Doha agreement— details not even shared with the Kabul government— the Taliban effectively spread propaganda and disinfor­mation about the agreement.

In the forty-five days following the agreement, from 1 March to 15 April 2020, the Quetta Shura conducted over 4,500 attacks against government forces—an increase of more than 70 per cent compared to the same period the previous year. During this time, more than 900 Kabul government forces were killed, up from approximately 520 in the previous year. Mean­while, due to a significant reduction in offensive opera­tions and airstrikes by Afghan and US forces against the Taliban, Taliban casualties fell to 610, down from about 1,660 in the same period the previous year.

The momentum of violence by the Quetta Shura began to escalate in May. The Taliban appeared displeased with the US for failing to impose an interim governmentin Kabul and for the Trump deadline. Additionally, the pace of prisoner releases was slow. This led to increased pressure on highways and a surge in targeted killings in urban areas.

On 22 June 2020, Afghanistan reported its ‘bloodiest week in nineteen years’, during which 291 members of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) were killed and 550 others wounded in 422 attacks by the Taliban. The violence also resulted in the deaths of at least 42 civilians, including women and children, and injuries to 105 others across eighteen provinces. During the same week, the Taliban kidnapped sixty civilians in the central province of Daykundi.

After nearly four months of intense post-Doha deal violence, the Taliban revealed their primary demands: the release of Haji Bashir Noorzai, the Taliban narcotics kingpin who had been in US custody for fifteen years, and the release of 400 of the remain­ing hardcore Guantanamo Bay Taliban prisoners from the batch of 5,000 to be released as part of the Doha deal. Directorate S had apparently been planning this strategy for some time, intending to escalate violence to secure a quid pro quo from the US.

The last 400 prisoners included bomb makers and a few Al- Qaeda extremists likely to resume fighting against the Kabul government upon their release. Among them were convicted murderers such as Nargis Mohammad Hasan, a former Afghan police officer who had killed US adviser Joseph Griffin in 2012, and Hekmatullah, a former Afghan soldier who had killed three off-duty Australian soldiers during a poker game.

Mullah Baradar was advised to contact US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo directly. Baradar spoke with Pompeo on 29 June 2020. In addition to demanding Noorzai’s release, Baradar urged Pompeo to release the final batch of 400 prisoners. It is reported that Khalilzad supported both of Baradar’s demands and recommended them to Pompeo. He also pres­sured President Ghani to agree to the prisoner release. Once again, Khalilzad delivered what was planned and needed by the ISI.

Why did Khalilzad repeatedly compro­mise US interests and manoeuvre things to benefit the ISI?

Despite Khalilzad’s persistent efforts, which led to initial considerations by the Trump administration to release Noorzai, there was no consensus within the US government to grant his release. The hesitation was largely due to Noorzai’s significant involvement in drug traf­ficking and his considerable tribal influence. The mistake of releasing Haji Juma Khan under Khalilzad’s pressure in 2018 was not repeated. However, Khalilzad did succeed in persuading Ghani to agree to a compromise. Ghani convened a Loya Jirga to determine the fate of the most problematic Taliban prisoners. In early August, the Loya Jirga approved the release of everyone on the Taliban’s list, including Hasan and the convicted murderers.

In October 2020, fresh from their triumph facilitated by Khalilzad, the Quetta Shura launched a coordinated attack on the cities of Lashkargah, Kunduz and Faizabad, stretching from the south to the north of Afghanistan. The Sare Qeta formations established a physical presence inside these three cities. Fighting also intensified in Kandahar’s rural suburbs of Arghandab, Zirai and Panjwai. This offensive was clearly intended as a warning to the US, deterring it from re-engaging in the war. Even USAF airstrikes against Taliban positions in these cities were ineffective due to the absence of forward air controllers on the ground.

Directorate S was executing a well-thought-out strategy on the ground. Their objective was to establish an operational presence in multiple urban centres and engage in a war of attrition, making any response from Kabul or the US nearly impossible without abandoning the Doha deal and re-engaging in the conflict.

(This is an edited excerpt from The Nukes, the Jihad, the Hawalas, and Crystal Meth by Iqbal Chand Malhotra)

AfghanistanAmericaDoha Dealdrug tradegeopoliticsHaji Bashir NoorzaiISIMullah Abdul Ghani BaradarPakistanTalibanZalmay Khalilzad